Is it me.....

....or is that not the greatest picture of Jerry Boone in the Oregonian? At least his coverage of my stepdad isn't so bad....yet.

Socratic habitat

This is an actual school assignment. I still have to watercolor it.

Also, the best thing on the Interweb today:

Collision

About 12 feet from my apartment building this morning I had a bike collision with a pedestrian. I don't know if this is a coincidence or not, but today was also the first day I remembered to wear my helmet. Turns out I didn't need it to survive this wreck - my victim would have benefited more from having it having taken a spill on the sidewalk. Anyway, the poor girl (14 years old) was certainly more calm than I was post-impact.

Nothing like almost maiming someone in public to start off your day!

Two favorites

=

Click below to hear a song from the much-hyped Jens Lekman album Night Falls Over Kortedala, to be released Oct. 9:

The Opposite of Hallelujah

He is playing at Bimbo's Friday Nov. 9. I'm excited for this Swede.

Pilgrim journey

No, I am not journeying to Mecca. I am only going home for Thanksgiving. But I thought it warranted a posting since I haven't done this for give or take a decade.

I really do not recall a time I've gone home for Thanksgiving in my 20s. I've been in school all that time, or living across the country, so venturing to Portland for what is essentially a drawn out meal never happened. It was always "too expensive", "too crowded" or "too annoying". But this year changes everything. I am showing up for my turkey leg. And I will not take kindly to being assigned to the kiddy table.

Goin' to the Village

This upcoming Monday I am going to the heartland.....Davis, that is. Davis, CA is where my professor Rob Thayer lives. He lives in the famed Davis Village Homes. Completed in 1975, Village Homes was "designed to encourage both the development of a sense of community and the conservation of energy and natural resources." Most of the people that live there ride bikes as their main form of transportation and probably have admirable carbon footprints. Some even do not own cell phones, much like my professor.

Rob invited anyone in our class up to Davis on Monday during class time to come tour Village Homes. We can even stay after for dinner. One of the groups in our studio is the "Renewable Energy" group. They are charged with proposing ideas about energy conservation and alternative production to the Town of Rodeo. Hopefully they can find some design concepts we encounter and find a useful application for them in Rodeo. That is the hope.

I am along for the ride in the true sense of the word. I am in the Rodeo Creek Watershed Restoration group, so this stuff probably won't help our group too much. However, since I got to UCB, I've wanted to visit Village Homes simply because it is a well-known and successful example of environmentally mindful residential development.

We are allowed only to come if we ride our bikes and take Amtrak to Davis. From the Davis train station, we ride to Village Homes on two wheels, helmets and all.

Fifteen

My efforts to retrieve my misplaced favorite corduroy jacket are once again spoiled. I left it at a friend's house a few weeks ago. Shame, too, since it is beginning to get cool in the mornings and evenings (and I come home LATE, by the way).

I've been in the city a few times since losing it and I always phone the people that live there but none of them have ever been home to open the door. I asked Brendan about tomorrow night and he said it was likely everyone would be at the big Critical Mass. Apparently, it is the 15th birthday (or anniversary) of the monthly tradition that effectively ties up traffic at rush hour and induces utilization of public transit out of the city center. After a rough spring, the close-knit membership alliance has managed to stay out of the press.



I've only done CM once. It was Halloween 2005, I believe. Good time. I wore this amazing blond mermaid wig. (BTW, wigs will overheat one in a snap. If you wear one, dress light.) I kind of want to go again, should be a nice ride. Hopefully no old people in minivans will be assaulted and/or berated in public intersections by militant bike ninjas.

Field trip to Contra Costa County

My studio course, LA 201, Ecological Factors in Urban Landscape Design, took a trip to the bowels of Contra Costa County on Sunday. For almost 11 hours we toiled out there looking for any threads of environmental hope for this place. Anyway, below are some images of what we found:


Into the culvert we go....


Land slump


That's the way they do it in Pinole.


For some reason, my camera turns all skies pink lately...This is a channelized Rodeo Creek. Beautiful!


Great old building in Rodeo's downtown. Too bad its structural integrity is about zero based on the posted sign on the front window. I love the arcade entrance.


The coal fire plant in Rodeo off Hwy. 4.


What you see a lot of in Rodeo: powerlines on almost every hill landscape there is

To be Mayor...

The Oregonian carried a short story on my stepfather's annoucement to run for Mayor of Beaverton, OR. So far, I guess, the media coverage seems better than worse.

Good luck to him. The bid is for NEXT fall's election. All in time. Plenty of time for some skeletons to fall out of the closet, though.

It's a weekend. Really.

Well, kind of. It's going to be kind of a weekend. 'Kind of' for two reasons. One, I have nothing (big) due on Monday, so it feels like I have free time. Two, I have to go on some kinda hellish field trip all day on Sunday, from 7am to 6pm, up in Contra Costa County. We are going up there to look at about a gazillion things for our Ecological Analysis Planning and Design Studio.

So it is, therefore, kind of a weekend. I look forward to Friday night and Saturday as long as I get in before 12am. While Sunday is spoken for, the other two days got potential.

A major episode of 12 year old boy humor happened in my Plants in Design class. You wouldn't have guessed, but it did. While my professor was lecturing us with a powerpoint presentation on English Landscape Gardens, a slide flipped up with a map of Stourhead. Stourhead is one of those kinds of estates that are featured in all of the Jane Austen novels. Anyway, the map caught my attention because it included the location of an inn with a name that I cannot believe has not been changed or altered in modern times. See for yourself.

Also, in other news, my stepfather Bruce is announcing to the City of Beaverton tomorrow that he is running for mayor. This could get interesting. Hmm, I make an early prediction that the new Dalrymple-family Porsches are not going to impress local voters.

Let's go to Yosemite

From my drawing class:

My parents like cars or something

Since I left Portland this summer, my mother and stepfather have dabbled in conspicuous consumption to an extent that leaves me more than a bit queasy. There is little explanation to it other than the fact that my stepdad Bruce is an extremely easy sell for anything with four wheels. This past weekend, my mother and he decided to purchase two (yes, two) more (yes, more) Porsches. They already had one Porsche before last weekend, which I complained about at every opportunity, plus a Jeep Cherokee and a Mustang convertible.



I do think that buying two Porsches for two people, when those two people already have three cars between them, is a pretty idiotic idea. According to them, it would seem that one must have more than one or two choices of vehicles to be happy in this world.

I begin to wonder if we are related at all.

Sincerely,

Miss E
(proud owner of an 18 year old VW)

P.S. Five dollars says I won't be allowed to drive my mother's Porsche the next time I visit. Lame-o.

On the earphone

Jens Lekman, Oh You're So Silent Jens Lekman

Post Veteran's Day Music

The Walkmen have announced fall tour dates...

Tues, Nov 13, The Independent

WALK, don't run.

For the wrist challenged

Stephen Colbert has come up with a very keen promotion, advertising and public awareness vehicle: The Wriststrong Bracelet. The idea was hatched as a result of him breaking his wrist this summer.



Having just broken my own wrist this winter, I feel happy someone is taking the time to spread awareness for the wrist challenged.

Philippe's Inner Place Holder....Read strip below

Just



Keep



Scrolling




Down



Until




You



Can



*See*



The



Entire



Achewood



Cartoon!



Whoops



It



Will



Take



A



Few



More



Lines.

Philippe's Inner Machinations

Finally, a flow chart of my favorite otter. After I post another entry, you should be able to read the whole thing. Or I can do a placeholder....Let's see....

Give me a drop.

I think I suffer from persistent dehydration. Problem is, I don't really suffer from the typical symptoms of thirst that compel one to consistently rehydrate. The only time I must have water is when I exercise and after. I've gone entire days at school (typical 830am to 1230am) having consumed nothing liquid except 8 ounces of coffee. I get home and don't even feel that parched, but I do feel pretty terrible.

A couple summers ago, I went to a very nice place to have a full massage. Afterward, the masseuse woman told me she could tell I wasn't hydrated enough because of the way my skin felt - like she could lift it off my back and it would just "stay". So gross.

I need some kind of timer to remind me to sip water in class all day. Something like a low frequency vibration or electrical shock. I would do well in the desert...or at a behavior modification clinic. Ready and willing.

In other news, I will try to post thumbnails of my work from my drawing class this term. We just did a fun one on California landscapes and signage.

Also, in court today UCB failed to evict the tree sitters from the coast live oak grove that abuts our building. I guess they will be here for a while longer.

Ghosting Copenhagen

Today I learned a new term in urban historical research and mapmaking. "Ghosting."

Ghosting, as Herr Bosselmann verbosely described, is the exercise of overlaying new maps on top of old, examining each one through the other, looking to see the process of urban transformation over time, looking to see which historical forms have remained, looking to see which have not. And understanding precisely "why".

In sum, looking to the past to understand the present; taking it one step further to predict the patterns of our urban future.



It is quite a fascinating topic, for sure. That said, Herr Bosselmann is a little impatient with my current pace of taking his simplified chicken-scratch maps and turning them into a multi-layered smorgasborg of urban know-how. Thus is the reality of the student-professor digital divide.

Things I was told today:

"It is your job to outsmart the computer's laziness."
"Ghosting is going to teach this computer a thing or two."
"Yes, the reason that block disappeared so long ago is due to the tannery."
"We must not forget the moats, Rachel. We certainly must not."

Six years old...

Six years ago tonight I was at a PJ Harvey show with my boyfriend of the time, I'll call him Darren. The tickets, if I recall correctly, had been an early birthday present I'd received weeks before. The show was at the 9:30 Club, a nice venue near the U Street corridor on Washington, DC. PJ's most recent album was Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea. A notable album for sure.

Despite the promise of a fulfilling evening ahead of me, I do remember I would have much preferred not to go. In fact, since way before I got these blasted tickets I'd been not too psyched about a number of things and been rather depressed.

Returning from the show that night around midnight on September 11, very frustrated and melancholy, I made a promise to myself. The promise was that the next day, as soon as I could, at the very first opportunity, I would sever all ties with Darren and start to be a happy person again. As I tucked myself into bed that evening, I made a plan to email him with the news before he'd even had his damn coffee. It would be harsh, but it was entirely overdue and I'd lost all patience at that point anyway.

Eight hours later and I am at work (Correction: our work, Darren and I were at the same organization). I believe I was writing down some points that I planned to include in the email. I remember I'd gotten there pretty early that morning, right around 8:15 am so no one was really around. My coworker Karen was already at work with me. She had gotten into the habit of getting to the Center early at the start of the week so she could go home to Alexandria, VA before 4pm. Karen was nearly 8 months pregnant at the time. I continued to draft my email, happiness ever increasing, until my friend Charlie chimed in over AIM to tell me to immediately go find a television.

And the rest is history.



I left the Wilson Center at 10:45 with Karen. I had a solid plan to walk north for nearly two miles to my apartment in Adams Morgan on Belmont Road, NW. Later, she could find a way for her husband to pick her up. It didn't matter, really. According to Karen, we just needed to get out of our office and out of downtown which was less than 1/3 mile from the White House.

Am I a heartless wench because I didn't check on Darren before I left work with her that day? Perhaps I am. No, I am. But considering the circumstances going on in the world at the very moment, I could have cared less. I still am glad I made the call to guide a very pregnant woman a couple miles to a safe place on Sept. 11. With every anniversary of 9/11, Karen, without fail, emails me to say thank you again and includes photos of her awesome kiddos. My efforts that day have been a gift that continues giving.



Later that night, even despite the fact that Darren grew up in New York City, and was really devastated by the terrible events of the day, I kept my promise to myself. I kind of hate myself for being so self-serving and cold, but it really had to be done. The idea of not breaking up with him and having to console him over the tragedy for a number of indeterminable weeks was simply too much. In retrospect, he probably appreciated it. At least, that's how I spin it.

Here's to being six.